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RESTAURANTS
El Emperador Maya / 2*
1823 S SAN GABRIEL BLVD, SAN GABRIEL; 626/288-7265
That the cooking of Mexico can be hot is a given. But that the cooking
of the Yucatan may produce the most complex hot dishes in an already overheated
cuisine is a difficult matter to debate; there are simply too few Yucatecan
restaurants around for proper research. El Emperador Maya is the best
of our few Yucatecan eateries, a shrine to one of the finest
indigenous cuisines to be found in the Americas, and a hotbed of hot.
The chef contends that his biftek con patas is his hottest dish, flavored
with a rich saute of chiles, garlic, tomatoes, onions, cloves, cumin,
and epazote (a pungent wild herb). But we like the sizzle in the cochinito
pibil, an ancient Mayan dish of pork steamed in banana leaves (originally
the
"V leaves were placed in a pib, the Mayan word for "pit"),
flavored with onions, garlic, many chiles, achiote, tomatoes, and more.
If you want to reach something akin to a nirvana of hot, ask for a side
order of chile habanero, which is bound to fry your poor palate to cinders.
In this case, the drink of choice is horchata, a beverage that tastes
amazingly like liquid rice pudding and stands as the perfect antidote
to too much capsaicin. For dessert there are two of the best flans in
town, one plain, the other banana-flavored, each a further soothing emollient
for the agonies of the tummy. $; AE, MC, V; lunch Tues-Fri, dinner Tues-Sun;
beer
only; reservations recommended; west side of San Gabriel Blvd, north of
210Fwy.
Tung Lai Shun Islamic Restaurant / 2*
140 W VALLEY BLVD. SAN GABRIEL; 626/288-6588
Tung Lai Shun is a large, handsome restaurant on the ground floor of
sprawling San Gabriel Square Shopping Center (a.k.a. the Great Mall of
China) that serves the kind of cooking you'd find in the Islamic Chinese
restaurants of Hong Kong and Taipei. That cuisine is marked by a love
of breads, dumplings, lamb, mutton, and spices, so it's not surprising
to
find wonderful boiled lamb dumplings on the menu here, along with lamb
pancakes, hot pots of lamb and pickled cabbage, soup of lamb and cabbage
and mutton haslet (read: innards), more cold and hot lamb dishes, and
Beijing-style ox tongue. (Because it's an Islamic restaurant, you'll notice
there's no pork on the menu.) Otherwise, the five-spice egg- plant is
spiced enough to raise a bit of a sweat on your upper lip and the noodle
dishes are more than sufficient for a main course. One item everyone orders
is the sesame bread, served plain or, better yet, stuffed with scallions.
This massive plate of soft bread that's steamed, then
baked, and topped with lots of sesame seeds can suffice as a meal in itself.
You can, however, order a half portion, which is enough for four. $; ML,MC,
V; no checks; lunch, dinner every day; no alcohol; reservations not necessary;
southwest corner of Del Mar and Valley Blvd.
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